Recommended Science Fiction and Fantasy

This list is a sampler of some of my favorites, from among thousands of fine works. It also includes a few of my personal favorites from my own work. It does not pretend to be exhaustive. I have listed relatively few very recent works. That’s because I can’t keep up! Look for some excellent reference works toward the end of the list.

Linked titles will open a new browser window displaying that book at Amazon.com. (I hope to continue adding these links as time allows.)

If you have a title suggestion, email me with a brief description. I’ll add it to the list of your recommendations (but it might take me a little while).

For a good introduction (and for younger readers)

Barnes, John — Orbital Resonance (teenagers cope with life in a hollowed-out asteroid)

Gardner, Craig Shaw — popular funny fantasies include A Malady of Magicks and other “Ebenezum” novels (a wizard allergic to magic); also the “Cineverse” books, starting with Slaves of the Volcano Gods (hero trapped in B-movie worlds)

Heinlein, Robert A. — early (pre-1970) books from “the dean of science fiction writers”; for example, Starman Jones, Double Star, or The Door Into Summer. Excellent collection, The Past Through Tomorrow, includes stories that helped define the field. (Much of his later work suffers by comparison.)

Norton, Andre — Star Guard, The Stars are Ours, Starman’s Son, Galactic Derelict (The titles alone are enough to make you feel 12 years old again; classic young adult SF, evocative of everything that drew you to science fiction.)

Card, Orson Scott — Ender’s Game (thoughtful look at interspecies conflict) and its sequel Speaker for the Dead, as well as numerous other novels

Carver, Jeffrey A. — Eternity’s End, The Infinity Link, The Rapture Effect, From a Changeling Star and Neptune Crossing (some of my personal favorites: explorations of alien contact, AI, viewpoints on human consciousness and purpose, with science and sense of wonder; the latter book begins a new series, THE CHAOS CHRONICLES, inspired by the science of chaos.)

Cherryh, C.J. — Downbelow Station, Cyteen, and other popular novels set among the stars

Clarke, Arthur C. — Childhood’s End, The City and the Stars, and Rendezvous with Rama (transcendent SF, classics in the field; the sequels to Rama don’t come close to the original, sadly)

Clement, Hal — Mission of Gravity (classic “hard science” SF, life on a planet with gravity that varies drastically depending upon location) — now back in print as part of Heavy Planet: The Classic Mesklin Stories

Heinlein, Robert — The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein at the apex of his career)

Herbert, Frank — Dune (classic galactic empire saga)

Hughart, Barry — The Bridge of Birds and The Story of the Stone (wonderfully told and often funny fantasy tales set in an imaginary China of the distant past)

Jones, Diana Wynne — The Tough Guide to Fantasy (Not fiction, but a hilarious and extremely perceptive compendium of the vast number of cliches in modern fantasy)

Keyes, Daniel — Flowers for Algernon (basis for the movies Charly and, more recently, Flowers for Algernon; a true classic in the field, both as a short story and as a novel)

Landis, Geoffrey — Mars Crossing, a Nebula-nominated hard SF novel, written by an author who actually works for NASA on Mars exploration; excellent writing and characterization, as well as science

LeGuin, Ursula K. — A Wizard of Earthsea and other books of Earthsea (a young wizard grows into wisdom); The Left Hand of Darkness (an SF classic set on a world where humans must live both as male and as female)

McDevitt, Jack — The Engines of God (interstellar archaeology, and a story told with wisdom and grace); by the author of many fine short stories. Also, more recently, Ancient Shores.

Smith, David Alexander — In the Cube and, as editor, Future Boston (both set in a transformed Boston of the future)

Sturgeon, Theodore — More Than Human (What does “human” mean?)

Tolkien, J.R.R. — The Lord of the Rings (The tale of Gandalf, Frodo, and Middle Earth, this is a true masterpiece of fantasy and one of the great works of world literature. It inspired countless successors, but none that match its brilliance and depth.)

Vinge, Vernor — The Peace War and sequel Marooned in Realtime(imaginatively conceived hard SF and mystery combined); also A Fire Upon the Deep and his latest, A Deepness in the Sky (richly detailed novels filled with great sweep and scope)

Vonnegut, Kurt — Slaughterhouse Five and The Sirens of Titan, two of the best and funniest novels of this fine satirist.

Willis, Connie — Doomsday Book (hauntingly beautiful tale of time-travel researcher stranded in plague-decimated England) and many short stories

Wolfe, Gene — The Shadow of the Torturer (far-future SF with a fantasy feel; superb writing); followed, in order, by The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, and The Citadel of the Autarch

Yolen, Jane — Cards of Grief (SF with lyrical fantasy feel) and Briar Rose (heartbreaking fantasy about a woman’s search for her roots in the ashes of the Holocaust)

Nebula Award winners

Another good place to start is with novels that have won the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Nebula Award. Note that the awards are actually given out in the spring following the year listed; the latter corresponds generally to year of publication. Here’s the list to date:

A complete Hugo Awards list, including finalists, but without the purchase links.

A complete Nebula Awards list, including finalists, but without the purchase links.

Short fiction

A good place to find quality short stories is in any of the annual “best of the year” anthologies–for example, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois, or The Year’s Best Fantasy, edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow.

Or try the many anthologies of past works such as The Science Fiction Hall of Fame or The Best of the Nebulas, stories chosen by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, or The Hugo Winners, stories which have won the reader-voted Hugo Award.

On Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy

Writing help online:

My own Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy teaches the fundamentals of storytelling, and includes such topics as getting from idea to story, world building, creating human and alien characters, plot and conflict, style, finishing, rewriting, submitting to publishers, and more. It’s free. Give it a try, at writeSF.com.